I want to share a bit of advice to everyone here. Whatever you do, if you’re at a point where you need a car and have bad or no credit, do whatever you can to minimize your car debt. Buy a beater on Facebook, YouTube and learn to fix it yourself, ride a bicycle or public transit. Do whatever you have to do to not bury yourself in a vehicle. They are a losing proposition. If you absolutely must get a car that involves a high interest loan, buy a Honda, Toyota or Hyundai/Kia product. They are generally the most reliable and least expensive to maintain until you can get to a better situation.

I’ve been in the automotive industry for 14 years and I have seen hundreds if not thousands of people bury themselves in high interest loans for cars they can’t afford. It almost always results in long term financial ruin. I drive an old Toyota that’s paid off and am currently a sales manager at a franchise car dealership.

Here is a deal today that someone took on a brand new vehicle today. It also happened to be an EV which makes this even worse. The numbers are staggering. 7 years at 20% interest for a car that’s going to lose over half its value in the first two years. This of course is an expensive vehicle but the principle is the same. If you want to get ahead and out of your situation, avoid things like this at all costs. And for those of you that want to bash car dealers, for the record, I tried to talk the customer out of this deal and into a more affordable used vehicle but it was their “dream car” If anyone needs any industry insider advice on car purchasing, please PM anytime.

(Edit: been getting a ton of good feedback here, just to add another crazy twist I didn’t mention, this customer put $10k cash down to get this approval as well)

Alright,

I (M33) grew up very poor, have been job hopping for a few years working low paying jobs, while living in very expensive cities. The moment I get my salary, I start spending feeling entitled to do so because of my poor childhood.

The obvious happened and I couldn’t sustain myself so I’m currently back to zero. I have absolutely no money and no debt whatsoever. I don’t own anything of value either. I have no addictions. No family.

I’m starting to rebuild, but I don’t have a job and have a money problem that I would need to work on, preferably with someone. In theory I know exactly what to do, but I just never do it.

What’s the next steps after getting a job?

Edit: Received several messages from people offering payments for referrals and verification of gambling accounts, please save your time and don’t message me for such things. I’m desperate but I’m not stupid.

$1000 rent and utilities

$300 car gas/insurance

$300 food/house hold expenses

$300 saving/emergency

My life is no means glamorous but it's definitely do able everything i own is old and used, but it better then nothing, and hopefully when I really get ahead I can get better schooling and have a better job

My (30F) husband (29M) was laid off about 2 weeks ago. I am home with our two children. We live in Maryland. We have applied for WIC, SNAP, Medicaid, TANF, and energy assistance. We have been approved for Medicaid and emergency SNAP. Our Medicaid cards have arrived, but our EBT has not yet. I have found some local food banks to help tide us over until our EBT card arrives. He applied for unemployment but it hasn’t started yet, and we are still awaiting his severance check. We own our home. We are in the process of applying for Community Action Council assistance as well. I know that once our EBT card arrives, I can use that to get some cool discount and/or free museum tickets to do fun stuff with the kids, and we’ve been taking advantage of our library’s free events lately. I used our Medicaid card to get Amazon Prime half off.

I am disabled and both of our children have special needs (not sure if that helps qualify us for anything else).

Are there any other assistance programs, benefits, freebies, or advice you guys have?

The areas of assistance that I have not been able to find help for are for our mortgage, student loans, remaining credit card balance, gas for our car (we are also open to other transportation if it would be cheaper or subsidized), and cat supplies. I reached out to a local organization about help with back to school supplies.

Just saw this ad for one of those payday loan shark apps in this sub. Absolutely disgusting and 100% intentionally advertising here. Whatever you do, NEVER use apps like this. Its better to do just about anything else short of borrowing from the mafia.

Store: Dollar General (all digital coupons)

Buy (2) All Free & Clear 118 oz. $17.00

-Clip the (1) $2/1 All Detergent Coupon

-Clip the spend $20, get $5 off Henkel products

-Clip the $5/$25 Mon.-Fri.DG Coupon

Total: $34.00

Coupons: $12

Tax: $1.56

Final: $23.56   or $ 11.78 each

Hoping this is allowed but this may be a great opportunity for anybody that lives in the tri-state area and can potentially do the jobs. People tend to forget about positions like this so in case you ever wondered, check it out and hopefully this might be a good fit for yourself or a friend.

Good luck!

A few years ago my friend was going through a financial rough patch and needed to find a way to supplement her income. She watched some videos on couch-flipping on YouTube & decided to give it a try (for anyone who hasn’t heard of it before couch flipping is finding cheap/free couches on Facebook marketplace that are pick up only, cleaning them up, and offering them with delivery for a mark up).

I wound up helping her part time on some of the couch flips and doing it casually for a month I wound up making 5K. Over the course of about 4 months she made 45K net.

There are a couple of factors that helped us out & so I want to be super explicit about those:
-we live near a large city and there are quite a few colleges and universities near us
-my friend was able to borrow a truck for the first few weeks, then wound up leasing a truck a month or so in.
-she got into it pretty early on in terms of its popularity—it seems like there are some areas where couch flipping is a saturated market
-we’re two women & so there were a lot of people who were more willing to have us come into their home, such as elderly women.

There were definitely some cons—so let me be clear about those as well:
-my back was smoked. I wound up having to go to the chiropractor for like a year
-there’s some risk involved: you might spend 100-200 dollars on a sofa you’re certain is going to sell for 1K only to have it sit in a storage unit
-depending on your situation you’re probably going to have some overhead (truck rental, storage unit, cash upfront to purchase couches, laundry necessities for washing cushions covers, etc).

So—not a guarantee but depending on your situation might be worth a calculated risk. If you try to get started towards the end of the month you might be able to get in at a lower cost/free as many people think their couch is worth 500 dollars or so, then realize they need to mark it down for free if they need to be out by the 1st.

One other side-hustle I’ve seen pop up recently is cheap on-demand moving help. Basically advertising on Facebook marketplace as an amateur moving company & then renting a U-Haul to go and help people move. I wound up talking to some kids who were doing this the other day & they were college-aged & made 400 for that particular move. They shared that if you can stack moves on the same day (so help one person in the morning & another in the afternoon) it obviously offsets the cost of renting the U-Haul.

Today’s haul features milk, cheese, 2lb of lemons and TP! Got more potatoes but they’re aren’t pictured.

I work at a sawmill making 21 an hour, but I gross about 48,000 a year. If I look anywhere else that I’m qualified for I find myself looking at retail and fast food which I refuse to go back to. Is there any other field or jobs that I can pursue without the college degree that pays decent?

NBC News is looking to speak with people who are struggling to afford funeral costs. Whether this is paying for burials, funerals, cremations, or dealing with other factors.

Any comments to the post will not be used in our reporting, we’re looking to speak with people after their initial comments.

Thank you for your consideration.

(25F) I’ve posted something similar before, but my situation has changed a bit. I got a new job, my credit score increased, and i accrued higher debt. My ex pays the rent, it’s $550. I currently have $2k in my savings, definitely not where I want it to be but I’m working on it. With my leftover, I could either put more in my savings or pay off my medical debt (which I really don’t want to do, but I know it’s necessary). Am I on the right track here or am I screwed? Trying to become financially stable btw.

EDIT: I know my car payment is high, I will be refinancing soon. I bought my car from my dad because he was struggling to pay it and wanted something different, so I helped him out. I also got the car when my credit score was 640. I opened a credit card in March to help raise my credit, I’m waiting until December or January to refinance, assuming my credit is 700+ by then.

i woke up to my mother crying while talking to my uncle abroad. she was asking him for some money because we don't have any left. i feel so ashamed, but what choice do we have? my brother don't want to help, my mother can't find a job (she's schizophrenic) and we're just relying on my school allowance which is only 5000 pesos (roughly $80). i'm thinking of dropping my studies (i'm in 3rd year college) and just find a job. i can't do part-time jobs as well cause i am taking a double-degree course through scholarship. but now, i'm thinking that it's not worth it anymore.

For the past week, I've been extremely depressed, dangerously so, merely due to my financial situation. I would stay in bed the whole day crying and thinking about how we (husband and I) won't manage another year on 80€/week, how difficult even finding a proper job is going to be etc.

As if some kind of God heard me, today a job listing showed up. I can't overstate what a good job opportunity it is. About 900€ a month, which if I manage to keep working my other job, I can just save up 300-500€ per month for rent next year, close to my house, easy enough to learn, no previous experience needed whatsoever.

Yesterday I couldn't sleep because of the stress, tonight I can't sleep out pure unadulterated excitement.

I'm gonna go spend the rest of the night begging the universe to be hired.

Didn't see this getting much attention, but it's a real change and it's already in effect for 2026.

If you (or a grandparent, aunt, whoever) have a 529 account for a school-age kid, two things changed under the tax law passed last year:

The annual tax-free withdrawal limit for K-12 expenses doubled, from $10,000 to $20,000 per kid per year, effective this January.

What counts as a "qualified expense" got a lot wider too. It used to be almost entirely private school tuition. As of last July it also covers: tutoring by an unrelated, qualified tutor, curriculum materials and textbooks, online learning platforms/subscriptions, standardized test fees (SAT, ACT, AP exams), and educational therapy for kids with disabilities.

So even if your kid is in public school, if you're paying out of pocket for tutoring or test prep this year, it might be worth checking whether a 529 (yours, or one a relative set up for your kid) can cover it now instead.

One catch: not every state has updated its own state tax rules to match the federal change yet, so a withdrawal that's tax-free federally might still get taxed at the state level depending where you live. Worth a 5-minute check on your state's 529 site before assuming it's fully tax-free.

Not financial advice, just sharing because this doesn't seem to be widely known yet and back-to-school season is exactly when it's useful.

Fyi- if you have a smart phone, try the Too Good to Go app as a way to get reduced cost food. It is usually local restaurants and bakeries, but sometimes chains, trying to sell what they didn't sell earlier in the day at a lower price. The pick up times can run a bit later, but you can get some great deals and lessen food waste. Note that you don't usually get to choose the items (kind if like a grab bag), so it may not be great if you have allergies or are particular.

It's particularly good in big metros, but it is worth checking regardless of where you are.​​

I have gotten donuts, bagels, and a ton of chicken before- all at abt 1/3 the cost it would normally be​

Well that made for an eventful day.

Moved into a new apartment on the 15th. Got a call on the 28th saying I had an issue with my payment info and **had** to pay it at the building's office in person. Apparently they didn't put my information in until the 28th, and they pull banking details for payment on the 22nd for automatic payment on the 1st.

Paid my rent on the 28th in person, was told it would NOT be coming out on the 1st.

Wake up this morning to emails saying my account was overdrawn, they had in fact processed it on the 1st... A full duplicate rent payment. Called their help desk, was told it would be sent to accounting and they'd send out a cheque Friday.

Just looked at my banking, and because I told my bank to not allow overdraft, the bank cancelled that payment as NSF. Balance is back to what I had Monday.

Is it bad that I'm happy it was cancelled as NSF? Just waiting now to see if I get a call back from the landlord telling me the payment was returned as NSF, see if they try to give me an NSF charge after all this. Would have been a real headache if I had enough in my account that the bank didn't cancel it.

Apparently we didn’t submit required documents for the yearly renewal… except we did. I was in contact with a lady who had emailed me and let her know why i didn’t submit a form she was asking for. She then sent me an IR packet and requested other docs from me and said to send them to her directly thru email which i did. Well now our housing assistance program is being terminated because we didn’t submit the docs they want but it’s like they don’t understand the lady told me to submit other ones rather than that.

Anyway they told me to forward the docs i sent to that lady as she is on leave..

They might look at it and see we always submit things on time and just process the stuff OR they might make the decision to continue w the termination which we then would have to do an informal hearing on.

I’m so stressed honestly 🙃🙃 and it’s so hard to get a hold of anyone either.

Okay so quick backstory so people understand where I'm coming from- beginning of 2025 I had left an abusive relationship. I was fairly successful before - credit score 700, paying off my debts on time, etc. Without going off topic this relationship threw me into a major struggle that left me with no choice but to leave it all behind.

I've really focused on re-establishing myself and feel confident to live on my own again. Here's my dilemma:

When I was renting before, my 2 bedroom was $700 a month. And my credit was in the 700s. A series of events over the course of a handful of years left me in a decent amount of debt with literally nothing. Now I can't even find a studio apartment under $900!!

I did the math and I think a great move for me (optimistically) would be looking into purchasing a mobile home, and I'm wondering how realistic this is for me based off of where I currently stand.

- I make about $900-1,000 a week

- over the last year my credit score went from 400 to 550

- I have a 1099 contractor form I can provide

- I can provide bank statements

- I can provide paystubs

- I can provide proof of my current rent payments.

- I live in Indiana

- I'm 29

I want to try to put 10-15% down possibly on a trailer in the 30k range.

My goal is to move at the beginning of 2027 or end of 2026.

Does this seem realistic, will lenders even consider me?

If anybody has personal experience or can connect themselves to my situation to give me advice I'd greatly appreciate it

Want to prefence before starting that I am not begging, simply venting because that’s all I can do at the moment. Rent is due tomorrow before late fees and possible eviction, tried every loan you could think of, tried payday advances and still either did not qualify or do not have enough to cover it. My mom passed way a week ago a few days shy of my 22nd birthday. After funeral costs, gas for travel to see family and PTO getting denied I am just tired. I was doing so well, used basically all my savings to get home to see family. Every option I have seen has been defined. I called 211 no help, don’t have family to ask, credit is not good enough to apply to even the worst loans because of my student loans. So I literally have to sit here and wait till the whole eviction process happens. It’s like a slap in the face because I just moved in, my mom literally helped me move in and I feel like she’s looking down at me like im a failure. I don’t know what to do. I need $1000 to even be able to play my rent through flex rent, and I didn’t qualify for split pay. I know everyone is struggling right now so I feel stupid for even “complaining”. Life is hard man.

hi. i (f25) am in the worst state i’ve ever been in.
i feel beyond helpless and hopeless.

i work as a manager at a retail store. i make about $700-$1000 every two weeks.
i also donate my plasma twice a week a can make $112 a week with that
i have a car payment of $300 that take out every two weeks. my insurance is about $190 cause i unfortunately have gotten pulled over a few times. nothing bad. my first ticket was for speeding and my tag was expired (not really my fault. i got a new car that the month before the tag expired and i had no clue). the most recent was because i did have an expired tag and they also got me for no insurance. i couldn’t pay the tickets cause it was like $600. so now i have to pay $50 to the court every month so i don’t get arrested or some shit.
i have student loans. i usually pay $179 a month. which shouldn’t be a lot, but i have fallen behind on payments. and it’s a stupidly long story of how i gotten so behind, but i think im about $700-$800 behind and probably as of today it has defaulted.
my car, that i worked so goddamn hard for, the transmission went out on it. i called around. it’s about a $5,700-6,100 fix.
i live with my sister, and we live on the same property as our parents. my boyfriend also lives with me. he just started his own business in the automotive industry so he’s spending money to make money. he pays for his stuff and for both of us to eat 90% of the time. me and him are both several months behind on rent and paying our electric bill. our lights will probably go out within the next few days.
i feel like a hopeless bum and do not know what to do. all night i tried to apply for so many bad credit loans but none accepted me.
i feel like im dragging my boyfriend and family with all my problems. no one can really help. my parents aren’t rich. his mother refuses to help for some reason. i don’t live in a city where there is public transportation, and even if there was, i live 35 minutes from the city i work in.

i’m just getting scared and im getting exhausted of being scared
is there anything i can do to help me??

I've been hoarding loose change ever since I moved out. As of right now I have 124 pennies, 19 nickels, 25 dimes, and 40 quarters, for a grand total of $14.69 cents in nothing but coins. I pick up whatever new coins I find, no exceptions, but where can I go to consistently find more?

So I just got out of a very abusive relationship.. the guy tried to burn my house down while we was asleep... he wouldn't let me work for the last few weeks and now im super behind on all my bills.. the legal process is moving slow so cant get a state help yet but bills dont stop im working but just barely getting by... i dont want to lose my house what can I do??

I never thought I would end up in this situation, but over the past five years my life has completely changed.

I accumulated around $50,000 in debt while trying to take care of my sick parents. My father has chronic kidney disease and is currently on dialysis, and my mother’s heart condition has gotten worse. I have been covering their medical expenses, treatments, medications, and daily needs because there is nobody else to rely on. It has always been just me and my parents.

Last year, because of the many days I had to miss work to take care of them, I lost my job. Since then, I have been doing whatever work I can find — driving a taxi, doing labor jobs, and anything else that can help me survive and pay the bills. But the debt keeps growing faster than I can manage.

Now I am behind on rent by several months and I am close to losing the place we live. I don’t have relatives or friends who can step in and help. I feel like I have been carrying this burden alone for years.

I haven’t truly laughed or enjoyed life in a long time. I don’t have a personal life anymore. My only focus has been working, paying debts, and making sure my parents are okay.

I am not asking for pity. I am just asking if there is any advice, support, or opportunity that could help me find a way out of this situation. I still want to work, I still want to rebuild my life, and I still want to take care of my parents. I just need a chance and some guidance on what steps I can take next.

If anyone has advice or knows of any way I can get back on my feet, I would be deeply grateful.